Place Notes

59 53½

It was almost 1500 days ago.

We’d been house-hunting around Shetland but hadn’t found the right place, and our time had run out. The first of our tour party were due to arrive, so we drove south down the A970 from Lerwick to the airport. Then we discovered that someone can’t read flight timetables. We never really got to the bottom of who can’t read timetables.

In any case, we’d arrived at the airport at 17:20 to meet a flight that arrived at 7:20pm. There isn’t much to do at Sumburgh Airport on a Friday evening so we started browsing (on a very dodgy mobile phone connection) houses around the south end of Shetland.

“There’s one just a few minutes away. Can we be bothered to look at another one? Doesn’t look very interesting?”

“Why not? What else are we going to do for the next couple of hours?”

We found the place easily enough. It was built to be convenient for the airport. Built by the Civil Aviation Authority when they expanded the airport, and needed houses for airport staff that weren’t 25 miles away.

We peered in through the windows. “Might be a bit dark.”

We went round the back. “Has a pretty good view.”

We peered in through more windows. “Looks like it’s just been redecorated.”

We peered in through even more windows. “Do you like it?”

Hesitantly. “Yes. It’s worth having a look inside”.

That was our first look at our Shetland house. At 59 53½ North. We moved in just over 1400 days ago.